E3: Impressions of Virtua Striker 3

The Virtua Striker series is a long running Sega Arcade Sports game that has been very popular in the Japanese arcades. Last year, Virtua Striker 2 for the Dreamcast came out with disappointing results. While the graphics looked amazing, game play, and controls, all were just craptacular, so to speak.

With the past behind them, though, hopefully about a million light years away, Sega and more specifically Amusement Vision is bringing the next Virtua Striker game to the GameCube. While the demo was not playable, the footage we saw was very impressive -- at least in terms of graphics, and it was running on GCN hardware. If you thought FIFA 2001 for the PS2 was looking good, Virtua Striker 3 for the GameCube will blow you away. The game was running in real-time and the details were just amazing. The character models were solid, had high polygon counts and the animation was jaw dropping.

Still, it didn't look as though the game was using the GameCube's full power. This might be due to the fact that Virtua Striker 3 was being optimized for the Naomi 2 arcade board, which makes the GCN version we saw very likely a port. Hopefully, Sega will optimize the graphics for the GameCube and correct the flawed controls of past Virtua Striker offerings before the title hits store shelves.